I haven't posted anything in a long time!

It started when I got asked to write a piece for a cello player at the college here. He performed them on his recital which was the end of January. I have a movement from it on recording, the first movement didn't turn out so well because the pianist didn't have the music for very long, so i'll only put in the slow movement that turned out really well. Lament for cello and piano.. This piece originally was for flute and harp if you can imagine it from listening. It's mostly inspired by Faure.

The next piece came from a commission I got directly after the recital to arrange a Beatles tune for the string quartet in residence here at CWU (central washington university). For their valentines concert. So I was like ok I'll do it. I didn't realize it until after I had written it that this was part of the presidential speaker series which had been advertised since the beginning of the year. I arranged it during the time which I also arranged string parts from cd recordings for a jazz quartet which wanted to include a small studio string ensemble (which I also played violin in). Needless to say I was really busy and lost some sleep over it. But both concerts turned out really well, and I have a recording of the arrangement I did for the string quartet: "Something" by the Beatles.

Today I got approached by the piano instructor saying that he had a project for me also, so I'm looking foreward to seeing what project he has. I'm getting a lot more excited about composing since I'm finally starting to have uses for it. It's good to hear your music performed by quality players, especially a string quartet made up of your own instructors.

So that's what I've been doing, in case anyone has been wondering. If you're really bored and want to see how i'm doing in conducting class, you can watch this video, heheh.

Lament - In a word, lovely. Great melodic lines, plenty of interesting things going on from a harmonic perspective, yet all totally within your control. I especially like the way you have the piano playing an unintrusive accompaniment and the cello doing the main "work" - one thing I dislike about many piano/cello duets is that they seem to fight each other somehow, they don't sit naturally together. But in this, the piano is only half-noticeable after a while, but at the same time effective and essential. The only thing I can think of in the way of criticism is its length. I'd have liked for it to go on a bit longer. But the structure works fine at the current length so this is kind of more a recommendation than a criticism.

"Something" by the Beatles - Again, not a lot to say apart from pointing out that it's great stuff. I really can't think of anything remotely negative to say about this.

Nice to hear some more of your work, Jeff. I'd be interested to hear any of your orchestral/symphonic works performed by live players. :)

Nice job on the lament, and the conducting was splendid.

Very nice orchestra as well. Didn't know you could morph yourself into a lady, another talent from Jeff:)

Well, have a nice day :P

Good job here. Lament is very nice, a bit short (why so short?), but nice - I certainly hear some Faure influence in there. Great influence to choose too! Anyway, I'll leave it at that. Keep up the good work.

hahah, thanks for the compliments.

The lament was so short cause I wrote it that short I guess... It's the second part of a 2 movement work, but i didn't include the recording of that one because the performance of it didn't come out well at all... I'll put in a midi though so you can hear what it sounds like. It's more a combination of French and Russian early 20th century.

I would like to hear my orchestral works performed by live players too heheh, maybe someday.

Oh yeah, we had another Conducting quiz.

4BRUCE2.MID

Didn't know you could morph yourself into a lady, another talent from Jeff:)

Lol. Indeed.

Interesting videos, though - in the second one, parts of it made me think you were practicing martial arts or something :P. You seemed a bit stiff in the shoulders too, but that's coming from someone who's only "conducted" once, and that even got cut of due to incompetence :ninja:.

The cello and piano piece look sounded pretty neat, too - too bad the first movement didn't go too well; the MIDI sounds pretty cool.